Week in Review - Pumpkin Festival, Finished Reports, and a Funky, Funky Egg

We had an incredibly enjoyable and quite productive week - which is exactly the combination of attributes that I adore!  By far, the highlight of the week was taking Thursday off from our regular studies and spending the day at a huge Pumpkin Festival about 3 hours from our home.  I actually visited this Pumpkin Festival when I was a girl, about 30 years ago.  It was so very fun to visit again with my family - we had such a good time. 

We took lots of fun pictures in front of pumpkins...

and ate lots of fair food and pumpkin-themed treats...

and enjoyed looking at many beautiful handmade items on display.  I LOVE this quilt!

After spending the day at the Pumpkin Festival, I really feel like I've celebrated autumn.  The weather was crisp, the air was full of fair-food smells, and the feeling of small-town America was all around me.  I even got to eat my very favorite fair-food, funnel cake!

The week did start with me feeling a bit tired and flustered.  We logged over 25 hours at swim meets over the week-end starting Friday evening and going all the way through to Sunday evening.  My children all did well, though, and Amber inched even closer to her Junior National time in the 50 Free, swimming her best time of 24.22.  Yea, she's fast.  Needless to say, I wasn't completely prepared for school on Monday morning, though! 

 
Even with a hectic start, we had a smooth week and accomplished a great deal.  Mason and Duncan both finished their ancient Egypt reports in their IEW Ancient History Based Writing Lessons course.  They both did such a great job!  I am just so beyond thrilled with how my boys' writing is improving through this course.  Duncan was eager to share his finished report with his dad, who was impressed.

Of course, the children progressed in all of their basic subjects.  Here is Mason being tortured by me marking the words in a sentence with the correct parts of speech and diagramming all of the prepositional phrases.  While grammar is definitely not a favorite subject for Mason, grammar rules are really starting to click for him this year and he's doing better than ever in the subject. 

Amber finished module 5 this week in Biology and earned a B on the module test!  We spent an extra week on module 5 because Amber was having some trouble with the information in that, in this particular chapter with its emphasis on chemistry, it was all new for her.  She was very happy with her test grade (and so was I). 

We are finishing up the labs from module 5 as well.  We were both amazed at what happens to an egg when soaked in vinegar for a day or two.  Funky, funky egg!  So squishy!

 
After needing to go back and re-do several lessons in Algebra, Amber ended the week with a perfect score on her chapter test.  Yea!  She is also finishing The Scarlet Letter this week-end and will start reading Treasure Island next week.

While we didn't have time to do our art lesson this week, Amber and Mason both worked on some creative projects this week.  In sewing, Amber and I started on her book bag project.  This is our most challenging project yet as it includes snaps, velcro tape, and a zipper.  Amber picked out three complementary fabrics for her book bag project.  I particularly love the cupcake fabric.

 
Amber also worked independently on more projects from Socks Appeal: 16 Fun & Funky Friends Sewn from Socks by Brenna Maloney.  She completed an octopus...

 another mouse, and a cute, baby owl! 

Mason started making ornaments this week for the mini-tree we are donating for our local library's annual mini-tree silent auction.  The theme for the tree Mason is making is "Visions of Sugarplums Danced In Their Heads."  He is making an all-sweets themed tree.  He is making them all out of Sculpey III clay.  I think they are turning out so well - I may just have to bid on the tree myself!

We ended our week with take-out pizza from Little Caesar's.  At just 5.00 for a large pizza, we may be getting pizza every Friday for lunch!  It was so nice not to cook! 

That's our Week in Review!  If you want to read about what other homeschoolers were doing this week, check out the Weekly Wrap-Up hosted by Jamie at See Jamie Blog this week while Kris is away at the Relevant Conference.